PSFA Daily News Digest

16 January 2013

www.nmpsfa.org 

Barbara Riley, Editor  ·  Email:  newsdigest@nmpsfa.org 

Santa Fe/ Kids Count Report Released at New Mexico Capitol

The Associated Press

The New Mexican

January 15, 2013

A New Mexico children's advocacy group on Tuesday presented the latest troubling statistics on child poverty, teen birth rates and math and reading proficiency during the first day of the legislative session, hoping to spur action by lawmakers.

Officials with New Mexico Voices for Children and others gathered at the state Capitol to release the annual New Mexico Kids Count report.

• It shows 42 percent of New Mexico children now live in single-parent households, and
• the state ranks last when it comes to the reading proficiency of fourth-graders.
• Overall, New Mexico ranks 49th in child well-being, behind Mississippi.

The indicators included in the report serve as measures for the state's future economic, education and health successes, said Veronica Garcia, the group's executive director.

• "This year's prognosis sends a clear message that trends are going the wrong way, and they are not going to turn around by themselves," she said.

Garcia said the state's early-childhood education programs are only reaching a tiny percentage of children, and less than 2 percent of the state's budget goes toward funding these programs.

New Mexico Voices for Children is advocating for a constitutional amendment that would allow for tapping one of the state's permanent funds for money specifically for early-childhood education.

Rep. Rick Miera, an Albuquerque Democrat who chairs the House Education Committee, said focusing on young children and their families is going to be the only significant way New Mexico can turn around the statistics.

• "We've got to start early," he said, adding that Gov. Susana Martinez's support for education and the Legislature's new members could determine the success of the proposal this year.

Garcia suggested one place that policymakers can start is by focusing on reforms that would boost reading proficiency and graduation rates while ensuring fewer children are plagued by substance-abuse problems.

New Mexico ranks 48th among the states in the proportion of teens who abuse alcohol and drugs. Data from the state Department of Health and the Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey show 1 in 4 high school students uses illicit drugs and/or engages in binge drinking.

• The Kids Count report also shows nearly one-third of New Mexico children live in poverty and 37 percent have parents who lack secure employment.
• A separate report released Tuesday shows New Mexico falling to 50th in the country in its percentage of low-income working families.

The Working Poor Families Project reviewed 2011 census data and found there were 89,000 low-income working families in New Mexico - a 4 percent increase from 2007.

Nationally, data also show the number of low-income working families is growing, with nearly a third of the 10.4 million working families in the U.S. struggling to earn enough money to meet basic needs.

Brandon Roberts, co-author of the working poor analysis, said working families are facing a more challenging situation than those in the past.

Garcia called the trend troubling.

• "Income inequality, or inequality of outcomes, is very much tied to inequality of opportunity," she said. "Those who lacked good educational opportunities as children need additional supports as adults if we are to ensure that everyone has the same shot at the American dream."

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Taos/ School Board Examines Tax Election

By Matthew van Buren

Taos News

January 15, 2013

The Taos Municipal School Board discussed outreach efforts for the upcoming mill levy election at its meeting Tuesday (Jan. 15).

Voters countywide will decide whether to renew the 2-mill levy during the Feb. 5 school board election.

Living Designs Group president Doug Patterson addressed the board Tuesday, saying parents and community members are trying to get the word out about the so-called SB-9 funds, used for school facilities, technology and activity buses. He said proponents are trying to form a "grassroots groundswell of support" for the measure.

Superintendent Rod Weston said projects being considered if the levy is renewed include:

• a new roof for Chrysalis Alternative School,
• security fencing and gates at various school sites,
• playground safety surfacing,
• flooring,
• ceilings,
• computers and other measures.

 He emphasized the fact that voters will be faced with the renewal of an existing tax and would not see a property tax increase.

"This is simply a continuation of the current tax structure," he said.

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Socorro/ Zimmerly Elementary School Looks to Improve

By Lindsey Padilla

El Defensor Chieftain

January 16, 2013

At the Socorro Consolidated Schools Board meeting Monday night, school board members met at Zimmerly Elementary School to receive updates about school improvements, plans and processes for the 2012-2013 school year.

School board secretary Dawn Weaver asked questions regarding the areas in which the school scored poorly by state standards. The categories were "current standing," "school growth" and "growth of the highest performing student."

To deal with those concerns, principal Susan Comiskey said teachers are fitting in an intervention, working with students in groups and individually. They use the Accelerated Reader program in math and reading areas to improve scores by taking tests.

According to the head of teachers, Janice Jaramillo, students scored lowest in math.

• So in the computer lab, students are focusing on improving these scores using the Math Facts online program.
• This is a math game targeted for all students, she said.
• Using Math Facts, students take a mini test to determine what they retain and areas they need to work on.
• The students then play games in Math Facts and earn coins.
• Math Facts is available online so students can do it at school or at home, she said.

"The grading doesn't give us a true indication of what each individual student is doing as far as their individual growth," Superintendent Randall Earwood said.

Earwood said there are a lot of flaws in the school grading process. One of the flaws is looking at an individual class on a yearly basis and comparing it to the next class coming up. Earwood said he cautions people on how they look at the data. The state is currently working on the flaws and refining it to be a better process and he advised everyone to keep that in mind.

Earwood also said he is working with New Mexico Tech to create a teacher resource center with science materials that teachers can check out. Through the center, teachers will be able to pick up a kit to use in the classroom.

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ABQ/ Annual Evaluation of School Superintendent Starts

By Hailey Heinz

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

January 16, 2013

The Albuquerque Public Schools board on Tuesday began evaluating Superintendent Winston Brooks and considering whether to extend his contract.

The process happens each January, which means in odd years it happens in the midst of a school board election. This has raised eyebrows in the past, by those who think major decisions should be left to incoming board members.

But current board members contend Brooks should be evaluated by a board that is familiar with his performance. Moreover, Brooks' contract stipulates that his evaluation must be completed by Jan. 31.

Brooks said Tuesday he will not ask for an increase to his $256,000 base pay. Brooks' contract does say if teachers get a raise, he gets an increase of the same percentage.

Brooks said he hopes the board extends his contract, and he would like to stay in Albuquerque long term.

• "I really think we have some great things going on, and we have a long way to go," Brooks said. "I would really like to complete my career here, to be honest, and try to make as many improvements as I can for as long as I'm here."

The school board met in closed session Tuesday to begin the evaluation process, which typically takes several weeks. The board initially will meet without Brooks and will later have a closed session with him to give him feedback.

The board will then vote on whether to extend his contract by one year, maintaining a three-year contract on a rolling basis.

Board member Martin Esquivel, who advocated two years ago for the vote to be delayed until the new board was seated in March, said he feels differently now. Esquivel was re-elected two years ago and is not currently running.

Esquivel said he urged the board to consider waiting two years ago because he was hearing from constituents who felt a new board should do the evaluation.

Esquivel said he now feels differently, in part because voters will select up to four new board members this year, as opposed to three in 2011. Esquivel said the majority of the board could potentially be new and unfamiliar with Brooks' performance.

• "At that time, we had three new positions, so I kind of felt like even if you have three new people come in and say, 'We want to run out Winston,' you still have a majority familiar with his work product," Esquivel said. "Now, you could have potentially four new board members who could come in and say, 'Yep, we don't want him anymore.' I'm not sure that would be fair."

Board member Kathy Korte also has changed course on the issue. When she was running for office two years ago, Korte said the board should wait, to respect the wishes of voters.

On Tuesday, Korte said she no longer feels that way.

• "We all, as candidates, want to make changes immediately and we want to see our ideas implemented immediately. And when you become a school board member, you realize how little you really know and how much you learn just in the first year of office," Korte said. "It wouldn't be a fair evaluation to rank the superintendent based on hearsay and based on what you see on TV and what you read in the newspaper, because you're not getting a 360-degree view at all."

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Santa Fe/ OPINION: Dispatch from India, Looking Beyond Classrooms

By Christian E. Casillas [Santa Fe native Casillas has worked in rural communities throughout Africa and Latin America, in areas of education, energy and "development"]

Santa Fe Reporter

January 15, 2013

Like many teachers, children and families in Santa Fe and beyond, I've come to believe that creating a more sustainable economy and community begins with rethinking our education system. And like Seth Biderman and Aaron Stern at the Academy for the Love of Learning, I've begun looking around the world to discover creative alternatives to schooling.

For a variety of reasons, my search has taken me to India, where for the past five months I've been zig-zagging through chaotic mega-cities, Buddhist monasteries and isolated tribal villages, visiting a wide range of organizations and people to try to make sense of the relationship between the human instinct to learn and the societal invention of "school."

One inspiring visit was to a place where classroom learning is nowhere to be found: the Udaipur-based Swaraj University, a creation of an organization called Shikshantar. Here, the "classroom" is India, and the learning is experiential, like bicycling penniless for 10 days through rural regions. The learners are supported in projects and mentorships that they design themselves, which have included opening organic cafés, documenting land reform and working with street children.

Shikshantar and organizations like it challenge the misconception that learning must be formalized and facilitated by trained teachers. It proves what we already know: that our most important insights and skill development often come from experiences outside of classrooms and standardized curricula.

Equally inspiring has been meeting a mechanic named Pramut. Everything he knows he learned hands-on, as his formal schooling ended in fifth grade. On a recent visit to his cluttered shop in Bhawanitpatna, I watched him patiently rewind electric coils on a burned-out motor, and realized that, despite my graduate-level classes in engineering, his knowledge of motors greatly surpassed mine.

Since meeting Pramut, I've been conducting a simple experiment. As I progress through my day, I ask myself if the people with whom I interact, and the human-built constructions that I see, would be different if India did not have its system of compulsory, formalized learning.

Most often, the answer is a definitive "no." People would carry on repairing shoes, selling goods, driving taxis, plowing fields, building houses or running companies in exactly the same manner: using the skills they picked up through experience. While not all classroom teaching is boring or irrelevant, it's clear that without school, the world would not come to a screeching halt.

 I visited one school in a tribal community where an exciting learner-designed curriculum was curtailed when parents demanded that the children be prepared for grade five standard examinations. Those parents, like so many parents and children in India and the US, buy into the fallacy that a diploma will be their ticket to a dream job. However, studies have long shown that economic success is far more closely correlated to social class than schooling.

If most of the knowledge and the diplomas that we pick up in school don't serve us in our daily lives, then why don't we take greater action to free our children to experience the world and spend more time discovering their true passions?

Re-forming school can start by simply increasing access to learning spaces that already exist, as Shikshantar has done in Udaipur.

In Santa Fe, where I grew up, we need to re-establish learning as a community-supported process that goes beyond the classroom, increasing children's access to the workplaces of experts, to sports and arts programs, farmers' fields, the mountains and deserts. We could expand experiments like Monte del Sol's mentorship program, and reduce classroom hours so children may explore the rich multicultural traditions of visionary Native American and Latino/a artists; get a taste of scientific research labs in Los Alamos and Albuquerque; and become involved with nonprofits like Earth Care, The Story of Place Institute, Warehouse 21 and Santa Fe Mountain Center.

Aside from our own fear of change, there's nothing standing in the way of freeing our children to spend less time in the classroom, and more of their days nurturing creativity and rediscovering wisdom that will help to heal our communities and environment. We can begin transforming Santa Fe into a city like Udaipur, a city that learns.

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Dixon/ LETTER: Fewer Corporate Breaks, More School Money

By Billie Bolton [Dixon]

ABQ Journal

January 16, 2013

I work in a school in northern New Mexico. We have no corrective reading teacher, no librarian, a half-time principal and a half-time special education teacher. Our inadequate staff is due to the drastic budget cuts the Legislature has made in education. And yet, they allow many corporations to pay no tax! That's why there is a budget shortfall.

We need to demand this session that the legislators step up and protect the children of this state. Make the corporations pay their taxes! Also, the corporate tax rate needs to be raised. The federal rate is only 35 percent. During the Depression, their tax rate was 99 percent and corporations still made a profit. California recently raised taxes on the wealthy, and they will have a surplus this year, instead of a huge deficit.

The corporate lobbyists are so numerous and so strong that they have bought far more influence than citizens ever could. That's why most laws passed are usually in favor of corporations. It's practically impossible to get a law that is for the people past the (Senate) Finance Committee. We need to get the corporate lobbyists out of our government, we need to force the corporations to pay their taxes, and we need to raise their tax rates. Then many of our problems would go away. Education could be properly funded.

We should flood the airways with this message until everyone is repeating it, and demanding it. We need to lead the debate with the truth, and get out of defensive mode of trying to stop the corporations from taking more and more from us. If we don't, they're going to rob us of all our social programs, just as the Congress is doing now, by trying to take money from Social Security, Medicaid and even from disabled vets in order to raise revenues! If Paul Revere were around, he'd be running through the streets ringing his bell. Never have the American people and our democracy been so assaulted as they are now by the corporations.

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New York NY/ National High School Graduation Rate Moves Up

By David Wessel

Wall Street Journal

January 15, 2013

America's high school graduation rate, which stagnated for the last three decades of the 20th century, is now climbing, according to a new, comprehensive look at the key education gauge by Harvard University economist Richard Murnane.

• Even with the recent rise in the graduation rate, about one in five American men between 20 and 24 doesn't have a conventional high school diploma, a significant barrier to getting a decent-paying job or going on to college.
• About one in seven women lack a diploma.

President Barack Obama has described what he calls "the dropout crisis" as "a problem we can't afford to accept or ignore." Mr. Murnane's data suggests that, for reasons he can't fully explain, there are encouraging signs of a turnaround.

During the first 70 years of the 20th century, the high school graduation rate of U.S. teenagers rose from about 6% to about 80%, Harvard economist Claudia Goldin has calculated. This increase in the cadre of workers' education propelled U.S. economic growth for decades, she has argued.

But between 1970 and 2000, the high-school graduation rate in the U.S. stagnated.

By 2000, the U.S. - which once had more of its young people finishing high school than any other developed country - was 13th in the rankings by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. For that reason, among others, it's no longer true that almost every generation of Americans has substantially more education than that of its parents.

• Using various data sources, Mr. Murnane, who teaches at Harvard's education school, estimates that 77.6% of Americans between 20 and 24 in 2000 had high school diplomas.
• Among those born 10 years later - that is, those who were between 20 and 24 in 2010 - 83.7% had diplomas.

The improvement was particularly sharp among blacks and Hispanics.

• For instance, in 2000, 61.2% of black men between 20 and 24 had finished high school;
• in 2010, 72.0% of black men in that age bracket had.

Measuring high-school graduation rates is trickier than it sounds.

• People tend to over-report their years of school on surveys.
• Administrative data is muddled by students who move between schools or are listed as "transfer" instead of dropouts, by immigrants who arrive after ninth grade and by inconsistencies in the way school districts keep tallies.
• The new Murnane estimates rely on a variety of government surveys and data from public school students in Massachusetts.

Mr. Murnane says he and other academics can't fully explain the fall and rise of high school graduation rates.

The economic reward for getting a diploma - higher wages - is substantial and grew during the years when dropout rates were rising, confounding economists who would have expected that to encourage people to finish high school.

The economist, a professor at Harvard's education school, speculates that some high school students dropped out when high schools raised standards for graduation because they realized they wouldn't get over the bar.

The recent improvement, he speculates, may be the welcome byproduct of a upturn in math and reading skills, as measured by test scores, among minorities in the years before the students reach ninth grade. Alternatively, Ms. Goldin suggests, the lousy economy of the late 2000's may have led students to stay in school because jobs were so scarce.

Mr. Murnane's recent calculations and his 70-page summary of the academic literature on the subject were circulated this week as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper and are to be published in the Journal of Economic Literature.

The Murnane estimates exclude those who don't finish high school, but later take an exam and get a General Educational Development certificate, primarily because GED recipients don't do nearly as well in the job market as high school graduates.

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Boston MA/ How to Get High School Dropouts into 'Recovery'?

Ideas bloom across US. Innovative programs across the US are finding some success in reengaging high school dropouts. They strive to target 'disconnected' youths - those not in school and not working, who are a costly burden for taxpayers.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, Staff writer

CSMonitor.com

January 15, 2013

Cydmarie Quinones dropped out of Boston's English High School in May 2011 - senior year. "It was the usual boyfriend story," she says. "You put so much attention into your relationship ... that it kind of messes up the whole school thing."

Six classes shy of the credits she needed, she thought that she could skip getting a diploma and still find a college that would train her to be a medical assistant.

"I've been doing nothin' for a whole year," Ms. Quinones says. Actually, she's been running into walls - spending hundreds of dollars on in-person and online programs that made false promises to get her a high school credential. Meanwhile, her friends graduated and went on to college, including her boyfriend. This fall, she says he told her, " 'I can't have a girlfriend that didn't do nothin' in life.' " So she decided, "OK ... I have to do it for myself and for everybody else.... I have to get my diploma."

Nationally, about 600,000 students drop out of high school in a given year. And more than 5.8 million 16-to-24-year-olds are "disconnected" - not in school and not working.

In 2011, governmental support (such as food stamps) and lost tax revenues associated with disconnected youths cost taxpayers more than $93.7 billion, according to Measure of America, an initiative of the Social Science Research Council, a nonprofit based in New York.

• "Education has become so key to getting into the labor market [that] we call dropping out 'committing economic suicide' at this point," says Kathy Hamilton, youth transitions director for the Boston Private Industry Council, which partners with the school district to run the Boston Re-Engagement Center (REC), a hub for helping dropouts like Quinones complete their education.

Dropout prevention has been in the spotlight in recent years. But increasingly, school districts are also realizing that they can do more to bring young adults back into the fold.

It's called "dropout recovery," with districts deploying a host of strategies - from door-to-door searches for dropouts to alternative schools where people earn free college credits while taking their final high school courses. The efforts are taking place in dozens of cities ranging from Camden, N.J., to Alamo, Texas.

• America has "long had a forgiving education system, where people can come back at any time to complete a diploma or finish a degree, but we haven't been structured to reach out and reengage youth who have dropped out," says Elizabeth Grant, chief of staff in the US Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. "As educators across the country saw more-accurate graduation and dropout numbers and recognized the size of the challenge, our school systems started to get more responsive."

The US Department of Education launched the High School Graduation Initiative in 2010 to support school districts doing dropout prevention and recovery work. Competitive grants were given out to 27 districts and two states, for a total of just under $50 million.

At least 15 cities have organized stand-alone reengagement centers. They offer a one-stop, personalized case-management approach - bringing together schools, private businesses, workforce-development experts, and other partners to try to reconnect young adults with a promising future.

• Since 2008, New York City's centers have reenrolled about 17,000 students, and
• the centers in Newark, N.J., have brought back 3,900, according to the National League of Cities.
• Staff members at Boston's REC listen to each student's story, share struggles from their own school days, help them find the right school or alternative program to fit their needs, and stay in touch once they've reenrolled.

That's what won the trust of Quinones. In November she started coming every weekday to take online credit recovery courses at the REC, a bare-bones set of offices and computer labs with inspirational posters.

In just a month - keeping normal school hours, though that's not required - Quinones finished four courses and is on track to earn her diploma in February. Although she feels "stuck" in geometry, a teacher is on hand to guide her.

"In high school, teachers never really sat with me.... Having teachers take out their time ... to go through one problem for four hours, that means a lot," she says.

• The REC "has expertly directed students toward options that are best suited to their needs, rather than falling into the habit of putting them back in the school where they were previously unsuccessful," says Chad d'Entremont, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy in Cambridge, Mass.
• Since 2010, the REC has re-enrolled more than 1,300 students. About 7 out of 10 persist for at least a year. The tracking system for the total number of graduates is still being developed, but at least 160 earned their diploma within about a year, Ms. Hamilton says, and she predicts many more will do so over a longer time frame.

Dropouts are a diverse and difficult group to get across the finish line.

• About 1 in 5 says he or she lacks parental support, and
• another fifth are parents themselves, according to the 2012 High School Dropouts in America survey by Harris Interactive.
• Other reasons for dropping out include mental illness,
• the need to work,
• too many school absences, and
• uninteresting classes.
• Some dropouts have spent time in prison or on the streets.

Settings that offer flexible schedules and sustained personal attention are often required to help them master the skills they need.

"I'm always very honest with them: 'It's going to be tough, but it doesn't mean it's going to be impossible. And I'm going to help you envision yourself with a cap and gown a year from today, or two years from today,' " says Carolina Garcia, a dropout recovery specialist at Boston's REC.

An 'early college' approach

In Texas, an "early college" approach to dropout recovery is gaining national attention.

• At least 10 districts are motivating dropouts to come back not just to finish high school, but also to take community-college courses free of charge - sometimes enough to earn an associate's degree or a training certificate.

The most notable is the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo district (PSJA), where 90 percent of the population is Hispanic and about a third is low income.

When Daniel King became superintendent there in 2007, he faced a dropout rate of about 18 percent.

• Nearly half the dropouts that year were seniors - 237 of them.
• "I felt I needed to immediately do something ... [because] the more time that went by, the harder it would be to find them and reengage them," he says.

In a matter of weeks, he had teamed up with South Texas College to launch the College, Career, & Technology Academy (CCTA) for 18-to-26-year-olds - in leased space in a former Wal-Mart.

• He put up banners around town with the message: "You didn't finish high school. Start college today." That, combined with a door-to-door search for students who had dropped out, resulted in 223 of those seniors coming back to school.
• By May 2008, about 130 had earned their diplomas.
• To date, more than 1,000 students have graduated from CCTA, more than half of them with college credits.

Along with core academic courses, former dropouts start with a college-success course that solidifies their study skills. Then they move on to career and technical-education courses such as welding or medical terminology.

The state allows both the school district and the community college to receive per-pupil funding, so the education at CCTA is free to students. Texas is also unique in funding high school students up to age 26. (Most states stop at around 21.)

"Before I came to this school, I had zero drive in me," says CCTA student Edgar Rodriguez. He was out of school for a semester and a summer while being "reckless" and "irresponsible," he says.

At CCTA, teachers tutored him for exams that had previously stumped him. The college-success class, taught by his former English teacher, inspired him to want to pursue teaching.

During a recent visit to an elementary school, Mr. Rodriguez shared a story and Web page he had created. "I had never been on that other side of the table where I was the one giving the presentation. I loved the atmosphere," he says. "I knew then, that's what I want to do."

As a fallback, he's taken medical-billing classes. His older brother was the first in the family to graduate from high school, he says. "Now I hope to lay down the next standard of going to college," says Rodriguez, who graduated last month.

Dropout recovery has also inspired more-effective prevention.

• Most PSJA students now have access to college-level courses while still in high school, which keeps them motivated. And students falling behind in the regular schools can move into "transition communities" where they get more individualized attention until they catch up.
• The district's dropout rate is dramatically down - from 18 percent in 2006 to just 3.1 percent in 2011. (The state average was 6.8 percent in 2011.)

Superintendent King was able to expand the early-college approach because "he made the case [that] if these [former dropouts] can go to college, why can't we do this for all students?" says Lili Allen, who is helping a network of districts replicate PSJA's approach.

"It was a smart and counterintuitive strategy," adds Ms. Allen, director of Back on Track Designs at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit based in Boston.

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Washington DC/ Home and Community Involvement Can Play Key Part in School Success

Educators are turning to parents and outside partners in formal and grassroots efforts that boost morale, achievement, and students' sense of security

By Michele Molnar

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 16 Edweek.org]

January 10, 2013 [posted online 1/17/13]

With educators and policymakers acutely aware of the role that home and community factors can play in students' safety and perception of safety at school-and its attendant impact on behavior and even academic performance-many are turning to parents and community members for help and support.

The perception issue is real.

• Children who were living in poverty and in communities where crime rates were higher and who attended inner city schools were predictably more likely to view their school environments as dangerous, according to Mary Keegan Eamon, a social work professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Jun Sung Hong, a doctoral student at the same school, whose research on the subject appeared in the Journal of Child and Family Studies in June 2012.
• The researchers found that, in some cases, simple responses to such concerns can prove surprisingly profound. They discovered that 10- to 14-year-old students who talked to their parents about their studies, school activities, and other concerns actually felt safer in school.
• In other cases, schools and school districts, aware that behavioral issues can be pervasive as barriers to learning, use everything from one-to-one help for parents and students to systemic programs in which an entire district gets on board to create or spark grassroots support to make safer schools.

Such is the case at Eastgate Elementary School in Kennewick, Wash., where staff members wanted to increase a sense of safety for students coming from a neighborhood struggling with threats of gang violence, says Stephanie Weyh, an English-as-a-second-language teacher who worked on the program as a co-chair with Michele Larrabee of Eastgate's Action Team for Partnerships.

• The school set a goal that 90 percent of children would feel safe, according to a case study written by Weyh and Larrabee, the school's Title I reading teacher. They co-chaired an outreach effort to families of at-risk 4th and 5th graders who, with their parents and older siblings, were invited to attend a meeting of the program, known as Gang Resistance Education and Training, or GREAT Families.

"It was hard to get them here at first," says Weyh. "They weren't sure what we were doing."

• Presented by police-who may find themselves distrusted in some communities-the GREAT Families effort was conducted over six weeks, in two-hour sessions.
• Each evening event began with a meal, where families sat with police officers and school personnel before the formal program began. Word began to spread.

In the end, Weyh says, some parents became more comfortable coming to school than they were before, and relations with police officers improved. In school, teachers noticed improvements in student behavior. "While we don't have any super-specific data, we know that-by individual student-we saw incidents decreasing and attendance improving. They had a better attitude about school, and about their lives at home even," says Weyh. The program is being repeated in the 2012-13 school year.

Expanding the Focus

Such an outreach-based approach aims to expand the focus on school climate beyond the confines of the classroom experience.

"If you really want kids to do well in school, you have to think about more than instruction," explains Howard Adelman, who, with Linda Taylor, is co-director of the School Mental Health Project and its federally supported National Center for Mental Health in Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"We advocate for a systemic approach to the learning and behavior problems manifested by students-an approach that avoids blaming students and their families and calls on schools to develop a unified and comprehensive component to address factors interfering with learning and teaching," he says.

To that end, he and Taylor have partnered with Scholastic Corp., the New York City-based publisher and distributor of children's books and educational technology, to create the Rebuilding for Learning initiative, designed to help school leaders create systems of learning support.

The Gainesville, Ga., city school system is in its fourth year of using the Rebuilding for Learning system to identify and implement learning supports.

• Merrianne Dyer, the superintendent of the 7,500-student district, recognized that 20 percent to 25 percent of her students seemed to have intractable difficulties in improving their learning over time, despite various achievement-oriented initiatives tied to the curriculum.
• With 54 percent of her students learning English and
• 78 percent receiving free or reduced-price lunch, poverty and its attendant challenges fueled the problems those young people faced.

Flagging Barriers

To help that 20 percent or so advance, Dyer adopted the comprehensive systems approach developed by Adelman and Taylor.

Gainesville school-level administrators and educators first identified barriers to student learning, including such factors as bullying, families who had not had positive experiences with school, bus incidents, and problems with gangs and drugs.

• One discovery was that 53 percent of the students deemed at risk of failure in Gainesville High School were new to the district.
• A system of supports was set up to help those students; it included a picnic welcoming them and their families to Gainesville, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.

In addition to support for transitions, Gainesville is working on five other areas:

• community outreach,
• home involvement in schooling,
• student and family assistance,
• crisis and emergency help and prevention, and
• classroom-based approaches to enable learning.

To increase home involvement, each school now has a bilingual parent-involvement coordinator-most are from the Hispanic community-to bridge communication gaps.

In looking at students' problems individually, the district realized that services were being duplicated, and that the big picture was often missed for families who were directed to different agencies to address issues within the same families, Dyer says.

"Now, we invite all community agencies to attend regular meetings, so they can see what is happening in each school and everyone can see their role," she says. One organization offers mentoring; another, after-school activities.

The Gainesville district reports that, by working to improve in each of those areas, disciplinary actions at the high school and middle school levels requiring tribunals-formal disciplinary actions that result in alternative placements-dropped 48 percent between the 2008-09 and 2010-11 school years. In the elementary school, those disciplinary proceedings declined by 75 percent. Over the past three years, referrals throughout the district have decreased 50 percent.

Mentoring Boys

Another approach to student achievement and behavioral issues has taken root in what's known as Eagle Academy, which operates boys-only public schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens boroughs of New York City and in Newark, N.J.

Eagle Academy was founded in 2004 by educators, parents, community leaders, and corporate partners, led by the New York chapter of One Hundred Black Men Inc., a group of professionals working with the community. The academy works with adult men to mentor young men on their academic performance and behavior, and to work with parents-mostly single mothers-to help guide the young men's education in the all-boys schools.

Today, nearly 1,500 boys in grades 6-12 are learning about academics and life in an environment that aims to focus on their needs and, to some extent, their families' needs as well.

"Our school in the Bronx has 610 kids. You could come to a meeting on a Saturday, and see 450 parents. It's standing room only," says David Banks, the founder and chief executive officer of the New York City-based Eagle Academy Foundation.

The meetings are an opportunity to gain parents' support for various school and class-level needs and activities, but they're also a time when parents will see tables set up for health screenings or educational or employment opportunities that could benefit them.

"One of the boys at our school coined the phrase, 'A young man without a mentor is like an explorer without a map.' That's why we've got mentors to serve as role models and big brothers for these young men," Banks says.

Prior to admission, most of Eagle's students "are average to below-average with significant social challenges," he says. But last year, the graduation rate for all Eagle Academy schools was over 87 percent.

The demand for Eagle's educational approach is overwhelming: 4,500 applications were received for the 100 openings Eagle Academy had in the Bronx alone. A lottery decides who will get in.

Support for Girls

Other programs are tailored to girls and their behavior problems.

• Gabriela Baeza, a project specialist with the San Diego County Office of Education, in California, has focused on helping girls-and their parents-for the past seven years.
• Baeza, who is called to intercede when a school in the 130,000-student San Diego Unified system is having pervasive behavior issues with girls, says emotional, physical, or sexual abuse is often behind the most egregious cases of acting out.
• In addition to running groups for girls only, Baeza conducts sessions for their parents.

"We let parents know that raising a daughter now is very different from when you were being brought up. So many things revolve around the media," she says.

Her emphasis for parents is how to help build their daughters' self-esteem, signs to look for that their daughters are in disciplinary trouble, and how to guide them through such issues. She teaches young mothers of girls the importance of being a role model, not a friend or sister figure, to their daughters.

Finding effective ways to communicate with parents is crucial. Baeza remembers a powerful program San Diego ran several years ago called Padres Unidos (Parents United).

• About 25 immigrant parents were trained to be facilitators, teaching 100 parents in small-group sessions about how best to support their children's education in the United States.
• Despite the program's success-which included parents' watching out for one another's children to avert truancy and other potential problems-three years' lack of funding and available personnel brought it to an end.

Funding Hurdles

Maintaining funds is a continuing issue for school safety initiatives, according to Wayne Sakamoto, the director for school safety in California's Murrieta Valley Unified district.

Budget cuts mean that money previously allocated for counselors, school resource officers, and bullying and gang prevention is now routinely allocated to the general fund for teachers or transportation, he says.

Often, schools must seek private support to keep safety programs intact, says Sakamoto, who speaks nationally on school safety and sees the trend across the country.

Sometimes, districts can succeed by combining forces, as the 23,000-student Murrieta Valley did when it received $160,000 for two years from the California Wellness Foundation to work with at-risk youths there and in three other school districts.

Sakamoto conducts many types of prevention workshops for parents. When students get in trouble, he is careful about how he speaks to parents to enlist their help. It requires finesse.

"Sometimes, we don't communicate effectively with parents. Through our words or demeanor, we may put parents on the defensive quickly," he says. That's why, when he gets in touch with parents, Sakamoto assures them that he is calling about "what's going on" with their child, not about discipline. His goal is to get them to agree to address the matter together, using one of the counseling or other wrap-around resources offered.

Creativity Needed

Asking for and finding ways to get support requires creativity.

• A survey conducted by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center for Quality Counts 2013 shows that many educators in the highest-poverty schools believe that parents there aren't supportive of teachers.
• In schools where the proportion of low-income families is 75 percent or higher, only about 7 percent of educators strongly agree that teachers get adequate support from parents.
• Where low-income students account for 25 percent or less of the population, just over a quarter strongly agree.

Finding effective ways to involve parents is key. Adelman, of the School Mental Health Project, knows parents can successfully be brought into schools to affect safety. He reports that when he and his colleagues began working with the Elizabeth Learning Center in Los Angeles, an initiative was undertaken to help parents by providing citizenship training, adult education, and a day-care co-op run by parents.

"Pretty soon, the district was saying, 'We're no longer going to send you a security officer-the data shows your incidents have dropped off dramatically.' Having so many parents on campus," he says, "had completely changed the climate there."

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New York NY/ Plucked From Back in the Pack, Unlikely Peer Leaders Step Up

By Sarah D. Sparks

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 16 Edweek.org]

January 10, 2013 [posted online 1/17/13]

Elvira Quintero and Brander S. Suero come across as effortlessly top-clique at Central Park East High School here. Composed and direct with adults, flocked to by other students in the halls, maxing out on their allowed Advanced Placement courses, and with applications in hand for college after graduation, they seem natural school leaders.

Yet like the achievements of Central Park East itself-recently honored by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's Expanded Success Initiative for its "college-going culture"-the students' success belies unpromising beginnings and years of struggle.

Both seniors are part of the school's College Summit peer-leaders program, which Principal Bennett Lieberman credits with helping administrators and teachers think differently about their students' potential: not test scores, but resilience and connection to other students as the earmarks of future achievement.

• "It was a huge culture change," Lieberman says referring to the school's decision to develop a college-going climate. "We've taken a lot of risks. I consider it the best decision I've made."

That sort of transformation is no surprise to College Summit's founder, J.B. Schramm. In the 1990s, while working in an after-school program for teenagers in a housing project in Washington, where the group is based, Schramm "saw firsthand how an influential student could influence other kids a hundred times more than I could," he recalls.

• "If you're going to change the school's culture, you need to find the influencers," he says. "Most of the time, [top academic students] aren't the most influential; often, other students look at the academic superstars and think they are from another planet."

Research shows that building a safe and supportive school climate is often a critical, but overlooked, component of improving academic achievement and behavior. Likewise, the students themselves are often the missing factor for schools developing a plan to improve school climate.

Reducing Apathy

Central Park East High School's evolution from an apathetic, low-achieving school to one with a college-going culture highlights how educators can put students at the center of a reform strategy.

The school sits at 106th and Madison Avenue, squarely in Spanish Harlem and blocks that could be light years away from the luxury tourist and advertising magnets farther down the avenue.

• In 2004, the school had a lot less energy, recalls Lieberman, who took over as principal in 2005. It had 270 students-little more than a third of the class of 2004 graduated-and
• only 200 rising 8th graders had asked to enroll there as part of the city's school-matching program.
• Attrition was high among both students and teachers.
• And the school had lost millions of dollars in federal education funding under the Title I program for disadvantaged students-"not because the students had gotten less poor, but because school officials hadn't bothered to send in the paperwork," Lieberman says. "The school was in severe disarray."

After re-establishing Title I funding, he decided to forgo a disciplinary dean in favor of hiring three guidance counselors and a social worker to start pitching students on going to college. At first, the staff members had trouble getting traction, says Joanna T. Nowlan, the first guidance counselor-cum-college-adviser to come on board.

"It was a challenge to be brought on to promote the college-going culture, because there wasn't any," she says. "It was me basically chasing the students around, interest was so low. The majority had credits to graduate, but they were 65s [their grade averages], and I couldn't get one kid to take a class they didn't need for graduation.

"They'd laugh when I brought them in and tried to make them do things" to prepare for college, Nowlan says, such as choosing schools or applying for financial aid.

Selection Process

A fellow principal suggested that Lieberman partner with College Summit, which identifies and trains student "peer leaders" to prepare for their own higher education and help their classmates do the same. Rather than focus on top academic performers and those who participated best in class, the program looked for the students whom other students most often turned to for help or advice-even when administrators were dubious.

• A panel that includes Nowlan, another guidance counselor, and
• two teachers selects 11th graders to become peer leaders in their senior year;
• more than a third of the junior class last year applied.
• Prospective peer leaders each write an essay on why they want the position and go through two rounds of interviews.

In 10th grade, both Quintero and Suero looked as if they could as easily be on track to drop out as go to college.

Nowlan says Quintero was different before being named a peer leader: shy and quiet, stressed by her father's long illness, and struggling with the increase in workload from middle to high school. "Elvira, when I thought of peer leader, I wouldn't have thought of her off the bat," Nowlan says.

But selecting peer leaders has forced Nowlan and her colleagues to "take the time to see the whole student and not just the grades," she says.

Similarly, says Lieberman: "I'm glad I wasn't the one making the decisions. ... Brander had a horrible year last year, and I probably would have been like, 'I don't know.' "

Suero and his younger brothers live with his grandmother, the family's sole breadwinner though she has less than a middle school education. He says his father floats in and out of the picture, and his mother is still in his native Dominican Republic.

"I knew I wanted to go to college, because I knew it was the only way to help my family and get out of this present environment," he says. But he says he started to feel overwhelmed in 10th grade; his grades tumbled, and he started to get into fights.

Since becoming a peer leader, Suero says, "sometimes, I'll want to argue with someone, but I think to myself: I'm a peer leader, I have to be a role model."

Good Bets

Throughout the school, bets on peer leaders have paid off in spades; there are 13 peer leaders this year, based on the school's funding from the national College Summit, and the school has created 20 of its own "peer group connection" leaders in the 11th grade.

During the summer, the College Summit peer leaders had help from university professors on college-application essays, and they have developed lesson plans and projects throughout the year with Wendy Lehman, an English teacher and the leader of the college-preparation class.

During one class in October, Quintero and other peer leaders talked their classmates through revising their personal statements in preparation for sending out college applications.

They also keep an eye out for their peers who seem to be falling behind. Suero recalls early in the semester pulling aside a fellow 12th grader who had not started applying to college.

"She said, she didn't know, because nobody in her family went to college, but I said, 'You are different, because you have all these friends who believe in you.' " He helped her finish writing a personal essay for the City University of New York.

All the peer leaders have brought their own grades above 80 percent, too. "We are role models for the rest of the class, so if you are just messing around and you don't get good grades, you're not going to be a peer leader," Suero says.

Peer leadership has even helped the top academic students in some unexpected ways, Nowlan says: "We had a student who is very, very bright and had never been rejected for anything before, but we couldn't take her. She's not a team player, not looking out for the guy next to her-just not nurturing.

"I've really seen a big change in her this year," Nowlan says. "She's more connected to other people. She was always involved in really petty drama, and I don't see that anymore."

Demand for Seats

Central Park East now has nearly 1,000 students applying for 120 slots in its next freshman class. The school screens applicants based on their 7th grade GPAs and attendance, but unlike every other screened program in the city, it does not select students based on standardized-test scores.

As the school has increased graduation rates and added advanced classes, "we've made ourselves an attractive, high-interest program, and we get a lot more applicants and students who want to be here," Lieberman says.

The school was one of 40 New York City schools recognized in 2012 for increasing graduation rates for black and Hispanic boys;

• the graduation rate for the class of 2011 was 85.4 percent, up 48.9 percentage points since 2004 and nearly 5 percent from 2010 to 2011.
• Likewise, when the school first began tracking its college enrollment, only 21 percent of students did so; last year, based on data from the National Student Clearinghouse, College Summit reported that 62 percent of the school's 2011-12 graduating class enrolled in college.

The racial and ethnic profile of the school's 465 students is about 60 percent Hispanic, 35 percent black, and 5 percent other groups, mainly Asian. More than eight out of 10 students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

The peer-leader program has now been in place five years, and the school has built on College Summit's framework by adding junior-year peer leaders and student mentors for every incoming freshman.

"Having peer leaders to represent the school and the college culture-having them come in motivated and serious about their futures-helped to stabilize things," Lieberman says.

"It's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy: On academics, every year we add new layers of difficulty to the kids' programs, and our experience is they are rising to meet us."

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Stanford CA/ Stanford Report: Disadvantaged Students in US Gaining on International Peers

By Sarah Butrymowicz

Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]

January 15, 2013

A report released Tuesday aims to debunk claims that the United States lags substantially behind the international competition in education. The study, released by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Economic Policy Institute, argues that looking only at the United States' average score on international exams is problematic and can lead to unwarranted policy conclusions.

By disaggregating the data of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), researchers concluded that U.S. students fared better on the exam in 2009 than most had originally believed. In particular, low-income students appear to have gained ground on disadvantaged students in other countries.

• "Our main message is a cautionary tale," said Martin Carnoy, a professor of economics and education at Stanford who coauthored the report. "If you don't make some attempt to look at everything by social-class groups, you are headed for lots of mistakes ... in your policy conclusions."

The exam, given to 15-year-olds, ranked the United States 14th in reading and 25th in math out of the 33 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

• Students in six countries achieved significantly higher scores in reading than U.S. students did; in math, Americans were substantially outperformed by other 15-year-olds in 17 countries.
• The lackluster performance of U.S. students, especially when compared to that of their peers in Shanghai, prompted some policymakers to compare the results to the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957.

The United States has a larger proportion of economically disadvantaged students than do higher-performing countries.

• Finland, for example, reports that 4 percent of its students live in low-income families. In the United States, nearly a quarter of children live in poverty.

Carnoy and his coauthor Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute also contend that low-income students were oversampled in the U.S. results on the 2009 PISA test.

• About 40 percent of American PISA-takers attended a school where half or more of students were eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, although nationwide only 23 percent of students attend such schools.
• After adjusting for both of these factors, they estimated that the United States would place fourth in reading and 10th in math-which demonstrates that educational reforms alone aren't enough for the United States to catch up to the international competition, Carnoy said.

"If you do policy that significantly reduces poverty in the U.S., I guarantee you, you will reduce the distance between top and bottom in our own country ... and you'll certainly raise those kids relative to kids in Finland, [South] Korea and Canada," he said. "If you really want to go after the academic issues in the U.S. schools, [poverty] is a part of it."

The researchers criticized the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) for publishing average country scores five weeks before the disaggregated data are made publicly available. The full set of data for the 2011 TIMSS will be released later this week.

• "We would be the first to argue that average scores in and of themselves are not sufficient on which to base sound educational policy or thinking," Hans Wagemaker, executive director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, which administers TIMSS, said on a press call. Wagemaker praised the report for moving the discussion away from average scores.

Carnoy and Rothstein compared American results by social class to the three top performers on PISA-Canada, Finland and South Korea-and three economically similar peers, England, France and Germany.

• They found that the most disadvantaged students in the United States, as measured by the number of books in children's homes, have been improving in reading and math since PISA was first given in 2000.
• By contrast, test scores among similar students in Canada, Finland and South Korea have been dropping.

"The whole idea that we're not doing very well for the bottom kids-we would say, 'Keep doing what you're doing rather than keep criticizing what you're doing,' " Carnoy said. "We're making progress with the kids at the bottom."

The most economically advantaged students in America, however, are slipping compared to their peers in the other countries that Carnoy and Rothstein analyzed. And at each level of social class, U.S. students perform worse than their peers in the corresponding group in the three top-performing countries.

• The data also reveal that Germany is improving faster across all income levels than the United States, in large part due to gains among the country's immigrants, while Finland's scores have been falling at all levels.

Still, the report's authors warn against making sweeping conclusions about any country's performance, pointing to a variety of factors that influence scores, from demographics to the tests themselves and how they are scored.

There can be stark differences in a country's performance over time on PISA and TIMSS, according Carnoy.

"It's a conundrum," he said, adding that he was surprised by the discrepancies. "It just throws a note of caution into this whole thing."

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Denver CO/ Several Colorado School Districts Push for Rigor in Science

By Yesenia Robles

The Denver Post

January 16, 2013

Come this fall, a new initiative to increase the rigor of science and math education will start by changing the sequence of classes students take.

At Northglenn High School, for example, physics will now be required for freshman - instead of for juniors or seniors.

"We always kind of realized there were gaps," said Lori Egan, a science teacher and instructional leader at Northglenn High. "We really hadn't thought about having physics first, but it makes sense in order to start making a richer curriculum."

Egan is one of the first teachers in the state who has taken new training and implemented a change.

On Tuesday, officials gathered to announce a $400,000 grant to fund training of about 200 teachers in at least five school districts that showed interest.

The physics training program comes from New Jersey, and the grant comes from the National Education Association. In Colorado, the Morgridge Family Foundation and Xcel Energy matched the grant.

The 200 or so teachers are to be trained for science, technology, engineering and math. About 1,000 teachers need the training, according to education officials.

• David Eves, president of Public Service Co. of Colorado, said businesses urgently need improvement, noting that more than half of Xcel's current jobs require math or science skills.
• Bob Goodman, executive director of New Jersey's Center for Teaching and Learning, started the program six years ago. His data show that more students are taking advanced placement courses in math and science, and succeeding.

According to Colorado Department of Education records, in 2010-11, of the 66,800 students who take advanced placement courses, 2,135 took one of the three advanced- placement physics classes.

Goodman said the money will fund one full-time state position to coordinate training and part- time positions.

Besides changing science class sequences, the program involves better coordination of science classes with math.

At Northglenn High, the distinction between physics, chemistry and biology may be blurred, Egan said.

"An engineer can't just understand chemistry. You have to understand physics and biology too."

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Washington DC/ The Problem With the School of One: Danger of Over-Customizing Education

Can technology make education too customized for the student?

By James Paul Gee

Slate.com

January 16, 2013

For decades, I resisted the lure of video games. Then I had a son. When Sam was 6, he enjoyed a game called Pajama Sam, which encouraged me to explore the world of video games for adults.

At first, I was amazed that people paid good money for this degree of difficulty in the name of entertainment. But after much frustration and persistence, I came to love playing titles like Half-Life, Deus Ex, The Elder Scrolls, Rise of Nations, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Chibi-Robo, and From Dust.

Such games are problem-solving spaces, I eventually realized. As such, they must do a good job at teaching the player to master the problem-solving skills necessary to play and win the game. But, more importantly here, such video games are designed to challenge players and make them work hard to succeed. This realization prompted me to begin researching how video games can be used to create good learning.

One problem video game designers have is a tendency seemingly inborn in human beings to optimize their chances of success. Gamers will often seek all possible advantages and use any tactics they can to win. They will, for example, engage in what gamers call "cheats"-pieces of code or hacks that can make the game easier or advantage the player in some way. The problem is this: Gamers will often seek to optimize their chances of success up to the point where they undermine the game's design and even ruin it by making it too easy.

Good game designers encourage optimization up to a point, as a creative and proactive activity of the gamer. However, they must forestall it from undermining the game and ruining the player's experience. It is a tricky balance and part of the art of good game design.

This human urge to optimize is, of course, old, and it applies much more widely than just to video games. Faced with significant challenges in the "state of nature," humans who survived were good optimizers. They did all they could to increase their chances of success (survival) and lower the level of difficulty they faced. Those who did not optimize in this way were selected out of the gene pool for good Darwinian reasons. In the state of nature, one could optimize only so far. The level of difficulty always remained high. One could not cheat death. Ultimately, every human "lost" the game.

Modern technologies allow the human urge to optimize and lower the level of challenge full rein and near endless application.

• In modern times, the human urge to optimize takes the form of customization.
• Modern technologies increasingly allow each of us, if we wish, to customize many things to fit with our skills, styles, desires, and beliefs in such a way as to leave us less challenged and feeling more "successful."
• This process goes ever forward with each new technological advance.

For example, today there are adaptive, artificial (computer-based) tutors to teach algebra. Based on how the learner is faring, these tutors (which do quite well) customize presentation, problems, and the order of problems to each individual learner. They can also be equipped with sensors that tell the system when the learner is bored, confused, or frustrated and adapt instruction accordingly. Each learner proceeds based on his or her favored style of learning in a way that lowers the level of frustration as far as possible. Artificial tutors do not care where you start, how long you take to finish, or how smart or stupid your initial answers are. They are far more tolerant than most humans.

There is nothing wrong with, and lots right about, such artificial tutors. They are just one device among many that seek to transform education into "a school of one." But they represent a perfecting of the human urge to optimize that can go too far and end with bad consequences. People who never confront challenge and frustration, who never acquire new styles of learning, and who never face failure squarely may in the end become impoverished humans. They may become forever stuck with who they are now, never growing and transforming, because they never face new experiences that have not been customized to their current needs and desires.

There is, in fact, an organization called School of One. Here is how the website explains the group's approach:

• School of One learns about the specific academic needs of every student and then accesses a large bank of carefully reviewed educational resources, using sophisticated technology to find the best matches among students, teachers, and resources.
• School of One's learning algorithm helps to ensure each student is learning in his or her educational "sweet spot." As it collects data, it learns more about the students and becomes more effective at predicting the playlist that will be most effective for each.

The same data-gathering revolution that has led to Google's personalization of the news or Amazon's customized book recommendations is leading to a revolution in individually tailored education.

• Advances in artificial intelligence have helped here, but so has the ability to mine massive data on learners of math, for example, so as to be able to predict which trajectory of learning will work best for different individuals based on what similar learners have done and how they have fared under various conditions.
• At the same time, a revolution in sensors means that we can know when learners are bored or confused and quickly adapt to the problem. An artificial tutor can gently lead us down out paths of least resistance.

All of this can be good, of course, but have you noticed that after you have bought lots of books on Amazon, the titles it recommends all come to sound pretty much alike?

As a gamer I want a video game to hold my hand when I begin, but I do not want it to customize the boss battle for me. I want the boss battle to test me, and I want to feel a sense of growth and accomplishment when I slay him. In the real world and in our lives, the "bosses" (e.g., global warming, growing inequality, bad jobs, transformative change, and worldwide poverty) are not going to adapt to us. We must enter the fray and let the battle make us better than we were before.

Success in the 21st century at work and in life requires collaboration, collective intelligence, and smart teams using smart tools. In our fast-changing world, a world that faces many serious crises, being able to cope with challenge, to persist past failure, to learn in new ways, and to adapt one's skills and style to other team members are all 21st-century skills.

Yet new technologies and the Internet allow us to enter our own customized echo chambers and identity niches where we can comfort ourselves with what we are and do not have to confront ourselves with what we can be and, indeed, must become as fellow citizens in a diverse and complex global world. This is particularly dangerous for students.

What happens when people with different "sweet spots" have to learn, solve problems, and collaborate with others who have different "sweet spots," as people so often have to do in modern workplaces? I wonder what would happen should, God forbid, children run into learning situations in the world that cannot be optimized for them individually.

What if the world changes and the problems that arise just do not afford solutions that fit their sweet spot? What if their sweet spot is just no good for certain types of learning and problem solving?

Adapted from The Anti-Education Era by James Paul Gee. Copyright © 2013 by the author and reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.